Kraftwerk, the electro Krautrock pioneers from Düsseldorf, have dipped into the app-authoring business with “Kling Klang Machine No. 1.” But, of course, showing their age and their solid position from another era of electronic music (that of the 20th Century), they did get a little help.
Via his blog, Norman Fairbanks, explained he has spent the better part of the past two years coming up with this thing in collaboration with Kraftwerk. In his announcement of the release (it went live last week, actually), Fairbanks stated this is not your regular auto-gen music program: “It’s a novel system that creates music and sound based on realtime data depending on your location that are continuously feeded into the app, meaning the KLING KLANG MACHINE No1 can’t be compared with other generative music apps which mostly utilize pre-programmed algorithms.”
There is a demo on YouTube that you can watch below.
It does indeed seem quite random and interactive. As for how it compares to the dirty, analogue qualities of the early to mid-seventies period Kraftwerk I have always loved (with a special fondness for the Michael Rother years), I cannot say that it does… based on the demo above.
If you want to check it out, you can get the app for your iPhone or iPad by following this link. The US price is $8.99.
